Recommended

0040The Weald

Our latest podcast comes long overdue from James Rogers, aka The Weald. Having not only contributed to the writing and research side of Stray Landings, Rogers has also appeared as a beacon of talent on our compilations and nights, and has thus been integral to the formation of the blog all along the way. His style has continually evaded full classification, with equal concern for dance floor fillers, abstract experimentation and sound collages. Even this mix itself is not the customary palette of sounds that one may expect from Rogers given his primary focus on techno, “I’ve been moving away from techno to more melodious climes” he explains, “this past year has been an amazing one for ambient music, and I’ve wanted to do a mix like this for a while. It was done inside the computer, and has some post-processing & little bits of field recordings going on.” When pressed for a description of the mix, he responds in tongue-in-cheek self-mockery, “baked weightless ambience, floating in deepest water infinitely stretching out to the horizon.”

Rogers has also recently founded the new Sheffield-based night, ‘Ecoutez’. “[It] started at a local pub”, he explains, as all good things do. “We got asked to do some music there for Tramlines (a festival in Sheffield) - then later we moved to Hagglers Corner, a local community arts space type thing, and Fred (Ras Si) started building the sound system. We like roots & dub, jazz, rare groove, house & anything funky and weird. we do it on Sunday evenings, it’s free, and although we are still taking baby steps, we are planning on making some bigger moves in 2015. Even though it’s on a Sunday people are really enthusiastic and don’t seem to mind braving the grim Northern weather to come and dance. This year I would really like to start an Ecoutez mix series, as Sheffield is full of great DJ’s.”

Indeed, when asked who to watch out for in 2015, Sheffield seems to be at near boiling point in terms of its creative output; “I think Phoneutrian is quite underrated, I included a bit of one of his tunes in the mix, and he has a lot of good stuff on his Bandcamp. Harry Murdoch, who has also played at Ecoutez, is a great DJ and producer so hopefully we will hear some more stuff from him this year. Rhombohedral is another Sheffield head who has been bringing out some good stuff recently, the same with Lodger. No doubt Tarquin will continue his meteoric rise to grime stardom. As far as labels and nights go: CPU, Thrillhouse, Sheffield Techno Institute, Music People, Banana Hill, Funk n Kraftwerk, Paper Song Club and Offmenut for being true bassline warriors…”